1 year ago

We're approaching the one-year anniversary of the bombing at Ariana Grande's concert in Manchester, England, and her manager Scooter Braun is finally opening up about the gruesome details surrounding the catastrophe, which took the lives of dozens.

In a new podcast chat with Big Questions with Cal Fussman, Braun opened up about the May 22 attack, which saw a man detonate a device at the end of the pop show while attendees were attempting to exit the venue. "When she found out that fans of hers had died, she was...so sad," he revealed. "She cried for days, she felt everything – every face they announced, every name, she wore on her sleeve. Every bit of emotion because that’s who she is. And the thing I will always remember is that she goes, 'If I don’t do something, I'm not who I say I am to these people.'"

After the bombing, Braun thought it was best to get back on the road, but the singer had some major hesitations. "She was suffering from trauma," he recalled. "She's like 'I can never sing these songs again. I can't put on these costumes. Are you crazy?'"

It was a moment that saw the manager make moves to cancel the rest of the tour with the guidance of the insurance brokers for the trek. Still, Grande knew that she had to do something and it was a string of text messages to Scooter that turned the entire ship around.

"And by the time I landed back in LA I had 16 text messages from her and she’s saying 'Call me, I've been thinking,' and she said 'Scooter, if I don't do something, I'm not who I say I was, and these people died in vain. I need to get back on to the road immediately,'" he explained of the moment. "And we thought about it, and I said I need you to take two weeks, I want you to see a therapist, I want you to get your mind right cause this is gonna be a lot. And I have a crazy idea. Before our next show in two weeks, I want to go back to Manchester, and I want to make this statement, we're not going to wait three months, we're gonna go back now." And she said, "I'm with you."